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King Zog not afraid to open fire

By Peter Lucas

Updated:
11/23/2012 08:33:00 AM EST

King Zog, after a long exile, returned to Albania last week.

No, it is not a rock group, but a real king. It is the late King Ahmed Bey Zog, a gun-packing rogue who ruled Albania before he fled the country upon the Italian invasion in 1939, taking 20 trunks of the country's gold with him.

We say "late" because Zog, who lived in splendid exile, died and was buried in Paris in 1960 after years of global wandering, even to the point where he purchased an estate on Long Island, which he never used. He traveled with his wife, son, five sisters and a retinue of some 40 aides and bodyguards, and of course, the trunks of gold.

So it is not Zog, per se, who came back to Tirana, the burgeoning capitol -- a dusty backwater when Zog left -- but his remains, which were exhumed upon the request of the current Albanian government for a proper funeral back home.

Some say the king was dug up by cash-strapped Albanian government fortune-hunters looking for the missing gold, some of which was reported to be buried with him. But that was simply an unconfirmed rumor. If it were so, the Albanian government would have secretly dug the king up long ago.

No, the real reason for the return of the king is that Albania is observing the 100th anniversary of its liberation from Turkish domination, although almost half of those subsequent years were spent under the Communist dictatorship of the late Enver Hoxha, and the rest of the time fighting various Balkan wars.

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It should be pointed out, however, that the hated Hoxha, who died in 1985, also had his remains dug up. No gold found buried with Hoxha either. Unlike Zog, who was honored upon his return with a grand reception, Hoxha's remains, taken from his elaborate marble resting place, were reburied in an unmarked roadside ditch.

Apparently flamboyant dead old kings in Albania are more honored than plain dead old communists. Which is a bit ironic since none of the politicians running Albania today, which is a sort of quasi democracy, have ties to the Zog royal family, but many were once closely aligned with Hoxha and the Communist Party, including Prime Minister Sali Berisha. He called Zog an "illustrious figure." Go figure.

Yet there is much to admire in King Zog. Tired of being president of a poverty-stricken nation of rebellious clans and peasant farmers, he declared himself King Zog I in 1928 (there's never been a King Zog II) and traded his presidential business suits for spiffy royal uniforms, complete with medals and decorations. Hitler sent him a Mercedes as a wedding gift.

From 1928 to 1939, Zog's main preoccupation was borrowing money from the Italians, which he never paid back, and staying alive. It was hard to keep him bought, though, because he kept coming back for more. It never appeared to dawn on him that the peasants might one day object that the vast majority of farm land in the country belonged to just a few families, including his own.

Zog, with his money from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, built a couple of palaces for himself and his family, played poker and dodged numerous assassination attempts, both at home and abroad. So it is no wonder that the king never went anywhere without packing heat.

His reputation as "a dashing royal gangster," in the words of his biographer Jason Tomes in his book King Zog of Albania: Europe's Self-Made Muslim Monarch, was confirmed when Zog was set upon in Vienna in 1930 by a pair of gunmen, both disgruntled former Albanian army officers.

They ambushed the king and his party as they came out of the Vienna Opera House. Panicked opera lovers ran for cover as shots rang out on the steps of the building. Zog's aide-de-camp took a bullet for his king when he fell on top of him in the back seat of the king's limousine.

Zog pushed the dead man aside, pulled his revolver out of the waistband of his tuxedo, and fired back, emptying the chamber, and then reloading and firing again. When the smoke cleared the gunmen who, like the king, were in evening dress, surrendered.

The news caused a sensation in king-conscious Europe. Where else but in Albania could you find a king, in formal dress no less, willing to shoot it out with a pair of assassins? This, I thought, is my kind of king.

I'm sorry I missed the ceremony. They don't make kings like this anymore.

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